Getting closer to the final stretch. Just need to keep up the pace.

This week, we cover dynamic content with JavaScript. Haven’t touched JavaScript, but hoping my experience with Java will help. My first go at dynamic content will be with this weeks lab. I’ll be taking HTML files for a New Year’s celebration event and work on updating the page content, while including a countdown timer written in JavaScript. Shouldn’t to bad.

Next up will be my course project. Need to figure out how to add some dynamic content to it, just not sure exactly what yet. While I work on the lab, I’m hoping something will come to mind that would make sense that wouldn’t be overly complex. Technically, the proper way to design the type of site I’m make, the articles would be dynamic content. Just don’t think I’ll be doing that for the course project as that would likely require me to setup a database to store the article information and then update the HTML code to display dynamically pull and display the articles. In short, that won’t be my dynamic content, so need to figure out what else I can do. Have a few ideas, just don’t want to pick something more advanced then I have time.

Made it past the halfway point and I’m still surviving. While I still find HTML unforgiving to work with, I’m still learning quite a bit. Now onto the next week’s worth of assignments which focus on web forms.

For the lab, I’ll be needing to design an ordering page. For my course project, I’ll need to design a feedback form. These should be interesting. My last class, I designed UI’s for Java applications, so I’m hoping some of that while help here. Granted, that was in Java and this will be in HTML/CSS.

Plan will be to finish the lab first so I can familiarize myself with web forms. Figure once I get that all figured out with the lab, the feedback form should be fairly straight forward.

As a side project, I’m planning on making the feedback form live so that I can get notified when feedback is submitted. Uncertain if that will be part of a later assignment, but something I would like to play around with. Plan will be to use API Gateway, Lambda, and SNS in AWS. I’ve already setup a Lambda function that can send notifications via SNS at work, just need to figure out API Gateway and how to tie that into my page. Should be fun.

Last week was a rough week that ended up not being quite as bad as I expected. Ended up cutting both my lab and course project assignments down to the wire. Need to turn things around this week.

Got a chance to review both of this weeks assignments, so now it game time. First up, this weeks lab, which shouldn’t be to bad. Need to find ten images and create a web page that will display those images in an automatic changing slideshow. Plan is to start finding those ten images and start writing the HTML by tomorrow.

Next up, more work on my course project. Time to starting putting the site together. This will likely be one of the tougher parts as I tend to have a hard time finalizing designs. I also have a hard time getting CSS styles to work the way I expect them to. As much as I’d like to say it is the code or browser, I know it is how I’m writing it. Just need to make sure I spend the time to play around with the code. Content isn’t an issue as Nintendo news is a plenty.

I can already tell this is going to be a fun week. While work is picking up in full force, I’ve got my work cut out for me with my class work. Need to start laying out my website for my course project and have another four page site to build for this weeks lab.

Fortunately, the course project has been layed out fairly nicely so that I keep chipping away at it each week, building on what I did the previous week. This week, I’ll be adding page layout details to the site diagram I made last week. Once I have that, I’ll start creating the pages for the site. No content yet, just the layout and navigation between the pages essentially. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I actually mentioned what my course project page will be. I am honestly not the most original, so I’m nervous about how this will turn out. Going to take a shot at making my own Nintendo fan site. With everything going on right now, I really don’t have the time to reasearch a lot of content, so I went with something I have the most passing knowledge of.

Next up is this weeks lab, which now that I think of it, I will likely work on first as it ties in this weeks project requirements. For the lab, I need to create a four page website that covers what major I’m working towards and three different fields I could expect to start careers in. This time, I’ll be incorporating CSS to style the page. Content wise, I should be good; but I will need to start this one sooner rather then later so I can get the CSS figured out. I’m much better at writing code then I am at designing user interfaces.